Duh (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, May 30, 2016, 17:39 (3103 days ago) @ Claude Errera

5. The sound design is over the top and outrageous, with too many layers and too much volume assaulting your ears all the time.

The overall mix of the movie is so weighted towards dialogue and sound effects that the music is nearly inaudible in places.

Yes. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Think about a photograph or a painting or something visual. If you have two or three dominant elements int he frame, drawing your eye, that's generally an effective image. But if you just keep adding tons of stuff, you lose the ability to be coherent and direct the eye.

I feel like it's the same thing for sound. The assault of all the little layers of sound effects makes it really hard to focus on a few key sounds that help the emotion of what's going on. In fact, often times the lack of sound makes certain key effects stand out more.

And as you say, this makes it much harder to let the music do its job. We are living in the 'more is better' world when it comes to sound nowadays, and it sucks.